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      Tuesday, September 14, 2021


geekstuff
08:02 AM - 09/14/2021

The topic: The home theater
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Last week, we watched "Murders Only in the Building" (Hulu) as a test run. I was pretty satisfied with how it went, just a couple of things I wanted to do differently. Last night, we watched Silverado and it was great. (The heat finally broke, so it was pleasant outside.)

Here's what each item cost (taxes not included, since your mileage may vary):

The projector - $71.99 (discount coupon)

 

The screen - $82.14

 

Roku streaming stick - $39.00

 

(November 14, 2021 update)

Not happy with the bluetooth headphone setup, the sound dropped out enough that it was pretty annoying to watch the movie,  I checked the headphones I'd gotten to make sure they could be used as wired.  I found an old Monster iplitter signal splitter that I'd never used. I ordered some 10 foot extension cables. (The projector does have sound, but we don't want to have the neighbors having to listen to our movies, some of the shows are not made for kids.)

When I finally had the opportunity to set them up, I found that the sound volume buttons on the headphones no longer worked. The splitter has controls for each plug, but it's against the projector and clearly not practical for adjusting sound volume. So, I researched volume controls and found these: Inline volume controls. I set the projector volume to maximum, the splitter connection volume to maximum. I connected these between the headphone cord and the extension cable and we're good to go.

Adapter for headphones (so we can use bluetooth), can connect two sets of devices at a time (his and mine) - $29.95

 

Update: January 13, 2022: Still not happy with the sound, I ended up buying one of these for better control of the volume and bass/treble. This is plugged in to the projector and the signal splitter is connected to this. So, we still have our own volume controls. Brian tends to listen at a higher volume than I do. - $47.49

 

Headphones, two sets (the ones we have can only connect to one device at a time and I'm really not inclined to re-pair each time we use them) - $22.09 each

 

The carrying case (this works like a dream, perfect fit for everything, even the extension cords) - $18.99

 

The stand (this was the last thing we needed) - $38.99

 

And a couple of fifteen foot extension cords. I couldn't find any in house and I figured we might as well have a couple of dedicated cords. For two it was $9.98. UPDATE: thirty feet of extension cord was too long, I found a twenty foot cord on Amazon and that works just fine.

We added a blu ray DVD player. Since we have thousands of disks, it's more cost effective to watch those than buy the streaming version. There was a ten dollar coupon for this, as well as being a lightning deal with an additional fifteen dollars off. It was about $66.50.

This is where we'll be  hanging the screen. Over the screen door that leads to the office.This was actually the first step in getting a projector for outside. Where could we put it so that the neighborhood wouldn't be watching with us? We definitely didn't want kids watching stuff like the Deadpool movies...

The screen arrived. It's pretty darned big.

It's installed. This took a fair amount of effort because Brian did not want to place it directly on the house. Remember Tim the Toolman Taylor? That's Brian. There's always a better way. The installation was a two person job and it really sucked because he made metal brackets that he attached to the wood and due to the holes in the brackets, placement of said brackets had to be perfect. It took five tries of us standing on ladders to get it done. The fourth time he had the bracket moved, it was off 1/32 of an inch. And it didn't work. But, finally, success!  We quit for the night because it was late and we were tired.

Installation complete. Pretty unintrusive plus it's out of the weather.

If you look closely (or click on the photo to get to the bigger one), you can see the metal bracket at the right, against the wood.

The pull for the screen. I can't reach it so Brian (my very, very handyman) got a piece of wood that would be long enough for me and made a hook type cutout. It's set beside the door since it's not a big deal if weather hits it.

Last night, doing some more testing before we started the movie. The projector is on the stand that's on the patio table. The photos on the screen are from a slideshow app I just found yesterday. It pulls them from my Google Photos account. It's actually a pretty nice little app. My Roku always choked on photos I had on a USB drive or over the NAS. Any of the third party slideshow apps I did find, cost money and I had to send the photos up to someone elses website. This app was a complete surprise to me. It's free. And I like it. It's called "photo view" and it works with Roku. A couple of months ago I got a warning that we were getting close to using the free data that came with Google mail. Brian sends a lot of photos and gets a lot of photos. I found out that it's only $1.99 a month for 100GB of storage. We aren't even close at this point. Of course, I still have the originals on my system here, but I like slideshows that work.

I am just gobsmacked by how good the images are from this little projector (another photo from the slideshow app).

And here's a pic I took with the crappy camera on my Fire tablet of the movie we were watching. Silverado.

After the movie, I asked Brian was the movie as good as he remembered. Better. The sound was a lot better than before.

So for under $450, we have our own home theater. And I think we're really going to enjoy it.

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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